mens rea

R v Steane

motive isn’t the same as intention, intention must still be proven

R v Hancock and Shankland

foresight can be evidence of intention, but doesn’t necessitate it

R v Moloney

direct intention: D aims/it’s his purpose to bring about the result

golden rule to interpret intention in its ordinary meaning

FACTS: defendant was drinking heavily with his stepfather. The stepfather boasted that he could outshoot, outload and outdraw the defendant. The defendant retrieved two shotguns so that the pair could compete. However, the defendant failed to aim his gun properly and accidentally shot and killed the stepfather. convicted of murder and appealed

RULING: appeal allowed, sentence changed from murder to manslaughter

RATIO: defendant intends something in criminal law if:

• They want that thing to happen; or

• They foresee that thing will be a virtually certain consequence of their chosen course of action.

Merely foreseeing a risk of the thing happening, even a very strong risk, is not enough to count as intention

R v Woollin

oblique intention: jury not obligated to find intention, but can if the result was virtually certain and D appreciated it

FACTS: D lost temper when 3-month-old son choked on food and threw baby towards pram by the wall. baby hit surface and died of fractured skull

RULING: defendant only intends a result if they wanted it or foresaw it as a virtually certain result – which was not the case here. The murder conviction was quashed and substituted for manslaughter.

R v Nedrick

oblique intention, origins of virtual certainty, later confirmed in Woollen

FACTS: D had grudge against woman and poured paraffin through her letterbox and set it alight ‘only to frighten her.’ the woman’s son died in the fire. Convicted of murder at Stafford Crown Court after the judge directed the jury that a high probability of serious bodily harm established guilt. 

RULING: appeal allowed, sentence converted from murder to manslaughter

RATIO: foresight of a consequence is evidence from which an intent may be inferred by the jury, rather than being the definition of intent itself

R v G 2003

test of recklessness, D aware of risk adn unreasonable to take it

FACTS: boys aged 11 and 12. Lit newspapers and threw them under a wheelie bin. Never thought the fire would spread to the shop.

RATIO: A person acts recklessly only if they are personally (subjectively) aware of a risk.

• Given the circumstances known to them, it is unreasonable for them to take that risk.

overruled Caldwell’s ‘obvious risk’ test of recklessness:

1. Conviction should depend on a culpable state of mind. Stupidity or lack of imagination is not culpable.

2. It led to obvious unfairness and offended the jury’s sense of fairness.

3. Academic and judicial criticism.

4. It was a misinterpretation of the Act.

R v Cunningham

recklessness and ‘maliciousness’

FACTS: defendant damaged a gas pipe while burglarising a home. The gas pipe leaked coal gas into the house, causing a person who was sleeping upstairs to inhale noxious fumes. The defendant was convicted of maliciously causing a person to take a noxious thing so as to endanger life. defendant appealed, arguing that the judge had misdirected the jury on the meaning of ‘maliciously’. The judge had told the jury that ‘maliciously’ meant ‘wickedly’ and doing ‘something which he has no business to do and perfectly well knows it’

RULING: appeal allowed, conviction quashed

RATIO: if a criminal statute requires the defendant to have ‘maliciously’ caused some consequence, the defendant must have either:

1. Intended to cause the consequence; or

2. Subjectively foreseen the possibility that the prohibited consequence would happen and recklessly decided to take the risk anyway.

McCrone v Riding

negligence: D’s act/failure to see risk falls under standard of reasonable care

FACTS: A learner driver holding a provisional licence, charged with driving without due care and attention

inexperience doesn’t decrease standard of care owed

R v Latimer

transferred malice

FACTS: The defendant attempted to strike a man, but missed and hit a woman instead. The woman was wounded by the blow. The defendant was convicted of unlawful wounding. He appealed the conviction, arguing that he lacked the mens rea since he did not intend to strike the woman.

RULING: defendant had the mens rea for the offence as he intended to strike a person, even if he did not intend to strike that specific person.

R v Pemblinton

transferred malice, correspondence of MR and AR

FACTS: The defendant got into a fight on the street and began throwing stones at the other participants. One of these stones hit a window and broke it. defendant was charged with criminal damage. mens rea for this offence at the time required the defendant to intend to cause the damage or be subjectively aware that his act might cause damage. jury held that the defendant had not intended to hit the window or foreseen this possibility, but convicted him. The defendant appealed.

RULING: quashed the defendant’s conviction.

RATIO:

• While the defendant had intended to throw the stone, he intended to hit a person, not a window

• didn’t have mens rea for property damage. MR and AR didn’t correspond

Edwards v Ddin

coincidence of AR and MR

MR cannot be found if it occurs too early or too late from the AR

FACTS: defendant drove his car to a garage and asked the attendant to refuel his car. The garage attendant complied, filling his car with £1.77 worth of petrol and oil. The pair had not discussed the price of refuelling beforehand. The defendant then left without paying. defendant was charged with theft, but a dispute arose over whether he appropriated anything belonging to another. The defendant argued that the sale was not conditional on payment, meaning that ownership of the fuel transferred to him the moment the attendant put it into his car. If this was correct, then he drove off with fuel that he owned – he did not appropriate anything belonging to another.

RULING: no theft found

RATIO: under statutory definition and interpretation, owner of the garage did not retain any property rights in the fuel. So, when the defendant drove away from the garage, he had not appropriated fuel belonging to another.

R v Jakeman

Coincidence of MR and AR

later regret of an act doesn’t negate MR

FACTS: defendant (Jakeman) booked suitcases containing illegal drugs onto a series of flights terminating in London. She later abandoned the suitcases in Paris, claiming she had changed her mind and no longer wished to be involved in the importation. Despite abandoning the bags earlier, the drugs eventually arrived at their destination in London, completing the actus reus of the offence

RULING: no requirement for the defendant's original mens rea to remain continuously present throughout every second of the commission of the offence

RATIO: Jakeman had the requisite criminal intent when she initiated the chain of events (booking the luggage with drugs), her subsequent attempt to abandon the plan or lose the intent in Paris was insufficient to escape criminal liability for the importation 

Miller and Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commisioner

mens rea superimposed for continuing acts

R v Thabo Meli

‘supposed corpse’ and conicidence of AR and MR

FACTS: appellants plotted to kill the victim. They took him to a hut and struck him over the head. This appeared to kill him, but in fact he was still alive. The appellants put the victim’s body at the bottom of a cliff to make it look like an accident. The victim died of exposure. appellants appealed their convictions for murder. This was because there was no coincidence of actus reus and mens rea. The actus reus, they argued, was the act of placing the victim at the bottom of the cliff – that is what killed him. At that time, the appellants did not have the mens rea of intention to kill or cause GBH. This was because they thought the victim was already dead.

RULING: upheld the convictions for murder

RATIO:

• The killing could not be divided into separate transactions in the way the appellants suggested.

• The attack at the hut and the abandonment of the victim at the hill were part of one ‘ongoing’ actus reus.

• It was enough that the appellants had the requisite mens rea at some point during this ongoing actus reus

R v Le Brun

supposed corpse, exceprion to coincidence of AR and MR

FACTS: During an argument on the street, the defendant struck his wife, knocking her unconscious. When he attempted to move her, her head hit the pavement and she suffered a fatal skull fracture. At his trial for murder and manslaughter, the jury was told that they could find him guilty of either offence if they found that he dropped her accidentally, but did so while intending to cover up his assault. The jury acquitted him of murder, and convicted him of unlawful act manslaughter. defendant appealed. He argued that, while striking the victim was a dangerous and unlawful act, it did not cause her death. Meanwhile, when he moved the victim, causing her death, he did not intend her any harm – so, that was not an unlawful act.

RULING: conviction upheld

RATIO:

• initial act of force and the defendant’s attempt to move the victim were all part of the same sequence of events.

• This meant that there was an unbroken causal chain between the defendant unlawfully striking the victim and her death.

• Since the defendant had mens rea when he struck the victim, and this strike was legally a cause of her death, it did not matter that the defendant did not have mens rea when he did later acts like moving her.

[W]here the unlawful application of force and the eventual act causing death are parts of the same sequence of events, the same transaction, the fact that there is an appreciable interval of time between the two does not serve to exonerate the defendant from liability. That is certainly so where the appellant’s subsequent actions which caused death, after the initial unlawful blow, are designed to conceal his commission of the original unlawful assault.

R v Church

novus actus interveniens and coincidence of AR and MR

FACTS: defendant was tried for killing a woman whose body was found in a river near his van. Earlier that evening he assaulted and seriously injured her in the van during a violent struggle. Believing that she was dead, the defendant dragged her from the van and threw her into the river. Medical evidence showed that she was alive when she entered the water and died by drowning. At his trial for murder and manslaughter, the defendant argued that he genuinely believed she had already died when he did the act which caused her death, and so lacked mens rea. The judge directed the jury that any unlawful act causing death inevitably amounts to manslaughter regardless of the defendant’s state of mind. The jury acquitted him of murder but convicted him of manslaughter, and the defendant appealed

RULING: appeal dismissed

RATIO:

• act must also be ‘dangerous’ in the sense that all sober and reasonable people would recognise that it exposed another to at least the risk of

• evidence made clear that the defendant was guilty of the alternative form of manslaughter: gross negligence manslaughter. The defendant was clearly grossly negligence by failing to take any steps to check whether the woman was alive before throwing her into the river.

• defendant’s conduct could be viewed as a single continuous transaction: did not matter whether the defendant believed the victim to be alive or dead at the final stage. If the earlier violence (which was clearly dangerous) had directly killed the victim, it would have amounted to unlawful act manslaughter: the later act of disposing of the body did not break the chain of causation

To establish unlawful act manslaughter, the prosecution must prove that the unlawful act which caused death was ‘dangerous’: that all sober and reasonable people would recognise that the act exposed another to at least the risk of some harm.

R v Kingston

mens rea needed for involuntary intoxication to prove intent

FACTS: defendant was charged with indecent assault after he committed sex acts on a 15-year-old boy. A third party had secretly drugged the defendant and the boy as part of a plan to set the defendant up. The defendant did not dispute that he intentionally committed the acts or that he possessed the necessary intent for the offence. However, he argued that his state of mind was due to his involuntary intoxication, which lowered his inhibitions and enabled him to act on pre-existing desires which he normally supressed. The trial judge ruled that involuntary intoxication was no defence, and directed the jury that a drugged intent remained intent. The jury convicted. CoA quashed the conviction on the basis that involuntary intoxication could negate mens rea. The prosecution appealed.

RULING: HoL allowed appeal and reinstated conviction

RATIO:

• mens rea is not the moral quality of D’s act

• if prosecution proves that the defendant intentionally committed the prohibited act, is it irrelevant that the intent arose in circumstances that reduced the defendant’s moral culpability. Mere disinhibition or loss of self control does not negate intent and cannot excuse criminal conduct.

• Involuntary intoxication does not provide a defence where the defendant formed the necessary intent. It is only relevant if it provides evidence that the defendant did not or could not form the necessary intent: in which case, the prosecution has failed to prove mens rea.

R v Allen (Kevin)

voluntary intoxication makes D liable for offence unless the crime is one of specific intent Majewski

FACTS: appellant was convicted of buggery and indecent assault. He committed these offences while drunk. His defence was that at the time of the offences, he had drunk wine without realising how intoxicating it was. He had then become so drunk that he was no longer responsible for his actions. Effectively, he was in a state similar to automatism. At trial, the judge had not permitted this line of defence to go before the jury. The appellant appealed his conviction. He argued that the jury should have been allowed to consider the impact of his intoxication.

RULING: appeal dismissed, conviction upheld

RATIO:

• Where the defendant has voluntarily taken an intoxicant, the fact that it makes far more intoxicated than he expects does not make the intoxication involuntary.

• possible to demonstrate that a defendant was so drunk they were effectively suffering from automatism.

• burden remains on the prosecution to establish that the defendant has the relevant mens rea